Here at BPMilwaukee, Andrew Salzman surveyed Schoop’s season and the roster factors related to the arbitration-eligible veteran, and also analyzed Schoop’s batting elements in early August. Salzman noted the declining aspects of Schoop’s plate approach, which resulted in a general profile of weak contact involving groundballs and pop-ups (both headed in the wrong direction). Paul Noonan offered a thorough critique of the logic of the trade during the deadline press cycle. Noonan illustrated the confusing logic of using Schoop in potentially interchangeable roster strategies at second base (including a potential platoon scenario), and highlights the difficulty of the second baseman fitting into the batting order.

Evaluating Schoop according to his Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP) progression complicates the matter. While Schoop undoubtedly declined in 2018, his stature as an arbitration-eligible player and his exceptional 2017 season impacts almost any pricing mechanism of his performance. If the Brewers take Schoop through the arbitration process, they cannot decrease his salary according to his performance (as salaries are protected through the arbitration process, which values service time more than performance). In terms of overall career progression, Schoop’s production remains close to a $11 million per season value, which is his estimated arbitration salary according to Cot’s Contracts; other estimates are similar, assessing approximately $10 million in 2019 salary for Schoop.

The following table estimates Schoop’s three-year surplus value, which roughly means evaluating Schoop’s production and scarcity (or, production and cost), and derives one-year contracts from those models. A “harmonic mean” contract is used to balance overall 2014-2018 surplus values with the highest possible value from that time period; this is an attempt to even out the roughest edges of these value estimates.

It’s not hard to see a scenario in which Schoop is worth $10 to $11 million; in fact, balancing high- and low-value figures for Schoop places his ideal contract in that neighborhood. Even if Schoop is not “truly” worth $10 million or $11 million, it should not be difficult to see a League Championship Series caliber team overpay a player if they believe they can yield the best possible performance from that player. The difficulty is determining whether Schoop fits that logic.

An additional difficulty is that because Schoop is so young, the “Aging Curve Logic” suggests that he should be working in a prime season, and therefore produce quality performances. Yet, relying on an aging curve to promote a bounce back season from Schoop is somewhat dubious, as there are numerous disagreements about peak age, evidence that season-over-season statistics become less volatile once a player reaches age-26, and a recognition that different types of players age in different ways, anyway (Silver 2015, 81-86). There is a very real sense that Schoop already “is who he is.”

As of March 30, 2018, PECOTA picked Bret Boone, Howie Kendrick, and Jeff Kent as the age-26 comparable players for Schoop. Kendrick is an interesting pick, as his 2010 season fell backwards from a 2009 breakout, but Kendrick eventually recovered to produce better offensive value. Kent is an interesting pick because at age-26 he was not yet “Jeff Kent,” and there were some real doubts about what he might become. Boone is more interesting still, as the young phenom fell back during 1995-1997 campaigns, and produced fringe average seasons prior to breaking out again during his early 30s. These last two comparisons should be kept in mind, as it could be possible that Schoop takes several years to continue developing aspects of his plate approach, and that his 2018 and 2019 season have little to no bearing on what Schoop eventually becomes. This may not appear to be a likely scenario, but it’s a possibility worth keeping in mind given the long and often unpredictable twists of player development.

The simple point is that projecting and pricing 2019 Schoop is not simply a binary exercise; his future is not one basic either/or scenario.

With these caveats in mind, I investigated MLB seasons with at least 300 plate appearances in their age-24, 25, and 26 seasons during the Wild Card Era (1995-present) with the intention of finding players similar to Schoop’s extreme plate discipline and power approach. This is a biased sample in several ways, most importantly in the sense of seeking out “starting roles,” which I roughly designated as players with 300 or more plate appearances (which reasonably excludes players with catastrophic injuries, fringe players, and many bench players). Additionally, the sample is confined to the institutional, player development, and game constraints of the last generation, which means that this survey is in no way representative of some “true population” of age-24, 25, or 26 players throughout baseball history. Additionally, by excluding minor league players of the same age groups, I am not fully assessing Schoop’s development and plate discipline against potential replacements or other developmental trends in the game, which is another limitation for assessing players by age. Given these biases, I am reasonably asking, “Who are relatively recent MLB starting players who approach the game like Schoop?,” and “How did these players age?”; since this is not any sort of sample representative of a population, I am using this to describe development trends rather than predict Schoop’s path in 2019.

(1) Schoop and Grichuk. In the last 24 seasons, there is one player who matches Schoop’s general trend of striking out more than 20 percent of the time, walking less than 6 percent of the time, and homering more than 3.5 percent of the time during each of his age-24, 25, and 26 seasons. Interestingly enough, that player is also a contemporary of Schoop, Randal Grichuk. Even within these general parameters, Grichuk is quite different than Schoop, as his walk totals are sometimes closer to that 6 percent threshold, and the strike outs are also much higher; Grichuk is more of a “Three True Outcomes Hitter” (relying on strike outs, walks, and homers) than Schoop, who is more of a bizarre type of contact hitter.

It is startling that even given the general acceptance of strike outs over the last generation, and the proliferation of home-run based batting approaches, baseball simply does not produce batting profiles like Schoop. This could be a good thing for the Brewers, as the club certainly seems comfortable working with unorthodox plate approaches; for example, another recent Stearns era player with an unprecedented approach is Keon Broxton; additionally, another unprecedented role on the Brewers’ roster is Hernan Perez. It certainly cannot be said that Stearns is squeamish about working with relatively oddball player profiles, and that trait probably helps to explain his ability to quickly turn around the Brewers franchise by assembling a bunch of high-floor players with extremely prominent scouting flaws. The only question now is whether Stearns will pay $10 million for that privilege.

(2) Examining “low walk” players (Schoop and Salvador Perez). Working with the parameters defined above (1995-present survey), Baseball Prospectus CSV provided 29,397 players overall, which whittled down to 6,495 players with 300 (or more) plate appearances; when searching for players with at least 300 plate appearances in each of their age-24, 25, and 26 seasons, I constructed a batch of 246 players for analysis (thus the above caveats for sample bias). This is quite an interesting group of players, and as one might expect from the present biases, it’s a very productive group of players:

Within this group of players, the most striking and promising trait for comparison with Schoop was walk rate, which was a good indicator to separate comparisons and descriptions of development from big walk, big strike out, big home run players. For Schoop’s intriguing trait is generally huge power (and indeed, he consistently produced better-than-median power for this group) without corresponding high walk totals. Thus, it wouldn’t do much good to compare Schoop to Mike Trout, Adam Dunn, Prince Fielder, Edgardo Alfonzo, and other age-26 walk monsters; those players are doing something different at the plate to reach their prodigious power. So, I isolated a group of 37 low-walk total players that posted an additional 300 (or more) plate appearances during their age-27 campaign, in order to describe an age-26 to age-27 aging pattern for these players. This is quite a fun group!

Here, the top table shows the change in category performance from age-26 to age-27 season, while the bottom table shows the basic age-26 production for Wins Above Replacement Player, Plate Appearances, True Average, and Strike Outs / Walks / Home Runs.

By plate discipline (K / BB / HR), the most comparable player to Jonathan Schoop on this table was Salvador Perez. Perez was able to cut down the strike outs and tap into more power during his age-27 campaign, which provided a boost back to league average batting production for the catcher. Jedd Gyorko was the best of these players at age-27, but did so by completely retooling both walks and home run power; this is a demonstration that large scale plate discipline changes can occur on a season-over-season basis. What is striking is that even among players who are comparable to Schoop in terms of low walk rates, there are very few that strike out as much as Schoop, or hit for big power. Hence the lack of comparable players, save for Randal Grichuk.

Schoop has his work cut out for his age-27 season, as the middle infielder can retain value through his power if his strike outs and groundball / pop-up fluctuations do not impede that power. He’s a strange $10 million gamble for a front office, as the general ideal of age-27 seasons from players with 4.0+ WARP seasons on their resumes suggests bright futures rather than large question marks. Yet, there could be reason to suspect that Schoop may age differently than other prime age middle infielders, both due to his consistently better than average power and due to his extreme plate discipline. Nobody hits like Schoop, and in some sense this ought to result in a vote of confidence from GM Stearns when the opt-in is a one-year gamble. But the lean months of 2018 speak loudly, where the power was rendered empty by low batting averages and the lack of another offensive carrying tool when that one vanished. So here we are, fixated on a relatively marginal roster deal, looking for excellent production in the middle of the diamond.

Citation

Silver, Nate. 2015. The Signal and The Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – but Some Don’t.. Penguin.

This post was updated at 5:24 PM on November 23, 2018 to correct the figures in the Grichuk / Schoop table.

Of course, the risk with trading is amplified: information asymmetry shifts from a player’s agent (on the free agency market) to a front office (in the trade market), which requires Stearns and the Brewers to maintain a different game theory (i.e., when making a trade, the Brewers cannot simply solve a coordination failure with another team by outspending all other comers); in addition to contractual risk, the risk of prospects or return assets must also be priced, which adds more room to strike a deal (“find the new market inefficiency!”) and to absolutely lose all value (the Jonathan Schoop and Andrew Susac / Phil Bickford trades are two examples of this for the Stearns front office).

There are several interesting trade partners across the league, including franchises that are tied to the Brewers’ front office personnel by lineage (as an example, Tampa Bay and Houston are probably the most prominent teams in this category). It would not be surprising to see the Brewers go after players that they are familiar with from Matt Arnold or Stearns’s previous organizational pipelines (or, whatever rumors those two can continually collect from the….er….informal information market). Recent changes across the league offer new trade opportunities as new eyes look over existing talent stock; here the Mets and the Giants most clearly come to mind. Additional rumors about rebuilding efforts in Arizona and Seattle, as well as the situation in Baltimore, add further trade opportunities for Stearns.

So who wants to deal? To make this article easier to read, the “Surplus Assumptions” are posted at the bottom of the article, as well as a Brewers roster (for full trade comparison).

First things first, everyone wants Jacob deGrom, so let’s take a look at the very best players that the Brewers could trade. At the top of this list, prospects like deGrom would basically require prospect packages like Keston Hiura / Corbin Burnes plus some filler; if the Brewers could acquire almost anyone atop this without surrendering Hiura, that would be magical.

To this observer, if the Mariners end up entering rebuild mode, the Brewers prospect package that could get the most mileage would be for a grouping of Mitch Haniger and James Paxton; this type of deal might be “lead” by Domingo Santana and Corey Ray if the Brewers also included a couple of their best arms. The price would be steep, but would bolster right field defense and On-Base Percentage (balancing the batting order, as well) and the starting rotation. Notably, this prospect cost would be roughly equivalent to spending one full market deal on Patrick Corbin.

There are also some players on this handful of teams that have gigantic contracts, and this is a place where Stearns could create a deal to “buy a prospect” or otherwise leverage the Brewers’ positive revenue scenario. The practice of “buying a prospect” basically means that the Brewers would take on the full balance (or significant balance) of a “bad” contract in order to receive a prospect from their trade partner. One example of this trade is how Atlanta acquired Touki Toussaint by “purchasing” Bronson Arroyo’s contract; to a lesser extent, the Brewers accomplished this when they grabbed Aaron Hill in the Jean Segura / Chase Anderson deal, which netted the Brewers potential impact prospect Isan Diaz (this was a great example of a “contrarian” deal by Stearns, as he acquired MLB talent during a supposed “rebuilding” cycle).

If Arizona is indeed rebuilding, a trade for Zack Greinke would be quite intriguing (someone like Corey Ray would fall right between his “raw” contractual surplus and total performative surplus). What is interesting is how many bad contracts the Orioles have; one would expect a creative rebuild from that organization, as they have so few valuable MLB assets that simply making solid trades for prospects will not be a clear option (at least not yet). It is interesting to imagine the type of trade the Brewers could make by retrieving Alex Cobb’s or Chris Davis’s contract from Baltimore. The Orioles are rebuilding, but their 2019 Top Prospect list indicates that there are nonetheless quite a few interesting players atop their farm system.

Finally, there is a group of very interesting trade targets that exist in a range of potentially cheaper prospect costs. I formed this group by looking at “raw” contractual surplus that would roughly cost an average prospect (50 Overall Future Potential), with total surplus that could range anywhere from average to impact prospect. One of the players on this list (Mike Zunino) has already been subject of a trade today:

Madison Bumgarner and Zack Wheeler are guys that jump off the page here for the “improve the starting rotation” types, and they are crucial examples of how tough it will be to price some veteran options. The range on Bumgarner’s value is quite extreme, and there is no way the Brewers would acquire the veteran southpaw close to his “low” price; so, the question would be whether one of the organizational impact prospects would be worth a player with quite a short-term contract horizon. Kyle Seager is another interesting trade candidate here, with a range that is almost impossible to decode into a useful prospect package: do you trade for elite Seager, or current Seager? What is the premium to be paid for his previously elite production?

Ironically, Jonathan Villar might be the Orioles’ most interesting and best available trade asset.

In short, there are plenty of intriguing players that the Brewers could acquire via trade. This exercise has hopefully opened a few of the strategies available to the Brewers (such as making a huge splash trade with prospects, or “buying” a bad contract). Additionally, the importance of being honest about high costs should also be apparent: the Brewers cannot simply “add an ace” if they view players like Keston Hiura as a part of their future, or even Zack Brown, Jacob Nottingham, Corbin Burnes, Brice Turang, and Trey Supak for that matter. Yet, in the event that the Brewers make a large trade, the pay off must be accurately assessed, which is one benefit of using a range of surplus assumptions to look at the high and low value markers available in a trade. For example, viewing Christian Yelich’s “raw” contractual surplus and total performance surplus below should show why it was worthwhile to surrender the prospect haul that Yelich required; the Brewers could conceivably do the same with an impact player for 2019, so long as the continued diminishing profile of their top prospects is assessed. If the Brewers forego a huge trade in the offseason, they could pay dividends both in terms of MLB development (in the case of prospects like Hiura), role determination (in the case of players like Supak and Turang), and more realistic roster need assessment during the midseason trade deadline.

Surplus Assumptions

To make it perfectly clear, here are my common surplus assumptions, with background here and here:

• Teams receive surplus value by retaining production and a contract (or, “scarcity”). Value in the MLB can be defined as the on-the-field performance and the scarcity of that performance (which is thus controlled by contractual terms).

• Surplus can be calculated in a “Raw” fashion, where the value of performance over time is simply assessed against contractual value; alternately, a “full” surplus assessment can be made by considering the future value on the field the club will receive, as well as the contractual hit they will take for employing that player.

• Arbitration and league minimum “reserve” contracts produce extremely high value because teams can frequently cut those contracts without paying full price. This adds value beyond the stipulations stated above.

• For this to work, MLB players, prospects, and cash must be translated to dollars. While this is an assumption that many do not like (opposing WARP/$ frameworks), I argue that the simple fact that teams trade prospects for MLB players, or cash, all the time demonstrates that these different asset classes can indeed be translated into a common currency.

• This should not be viewed as the be-all, end-all of player valuation, simply because there are different developmental models across organizations that could result in alternative models based on organizational strengths; WARP itself is only one way to measure players; prospect risk is nearly impossible to uniformly quantify across one group of players, which necessarily means that almost any prospect valuation system will be incomplete. Additionally, player development cycles are quite long, meaning that the value a player could be expected to produce within the next three years is nowhere near the value that could be produced in a decade; this matters depending on a team’s resources and the player’s distance from the MLB (or MLB service time), among other factors.

Here is one example of Overall Future Potential (OFP) pricing, based on a model that assesses all players in MLB history (to the point of that publication), and an update from 2017. These models will be further updated.

Based on these assumptions, here are the Brewers, including most of their players listed under contract at Cot’s Contracts, as well as a couple of their best advanced prospects (to compare prospect grading within the system). This article focuses on four calculations to produce surplus value:

• After depreciating production from 2014-2016, 2015-2017, and 2016-2018, those three figures are averaged to produce a “Blended Surplus.”
• The largest of the depreciated production from 2014-2016, 2015-2017, and 2016-2018 forms the “High Surplus.”
• “Immediate Surplus” takes a different look at production by simply using full 2018 performance and extrapolating it for three years. This is the equivalent of taking the most extreme view of immediate performance by a player.
• “Raw Surplus” is calculated by subtracting the average of these three figures, prorated for each player’s remaining contract, from the player’s contract (options excluded).
• “Surplus” is the final figure, adding the average of Blended, High, and Immediate surplus to the “Raw Surplus” contractual figure. This is equivalent to valuing a player’s on-field production separately from their contractual value.
• The “Raw” figure is meant to demonstrate a “buy low” price, and the “Surplus” column is meant to demonstrate a “buy high” price, but obviously these figures are not exclusive; they merely seek to establish potential boundaries for a trade.

What is interesting to note is that as tough as the names look on paper for the Brewers’ upcoming schedule, what with the champion of the trade deadline Dodgers, ghosts of contenders past in San Francisco, surging Rockies, and payroll-heavy Nationals, is that it does not look that difficult when all is said and done. Assessing teams by their underlying production with True Average (TAv) for offense and Deserved Run Average (DRA) for pitching, the Milwaukee roster acquits itself quite well.

In terms of pitching (by DRA), the Brewers are better than each of their upcoming opponents except for the Dodgers and Nationals. Ironically, as rough as the Brewers bats have performed all season in terms of park-adjusted Runs Scored, Milwaukee is better than each upcoming opponent except for the Dodgers (according to TAv). Really, the truest, toughest task of the next 20 games is facing Los Angeles for seven of them. Otherwise, it’s a chance for the Brewers to show their respective strengths, which includes the their exceptional defense, the third most efficient fielding unit in baseball (now tied with Houston and Oakland).

The trap in this sequence of games appears to be the relative offensive strength of each opposing club save for the Dodgers. While Milwaukee combines a decent rotation and excellent bullpen (in terms of DRA), both of these elements of the club “play up” thanks to the fielding performance; all this results in a ball club that has already prevented approximately 59 runs. This is incredible; this is nearly as many runs as the club prevented in all of 2017, which was still good for fifth best in the National League. That excellent pitching and fielding unit will take on what ostensibly amounts to four below average offenses over the next 20 games; these below average assessments can certainly be verified by Runs Scored, and further backed up by TAv in nearly every case (the Nationals might be the outlier here). This is the test that these Brewers were made for.

What will be much more tricky, of course, is the Brewers offense improving against each of the forthcoming pitching staffs with the exception of San Diego. Milwaukee’s offense looks bad overall, but the run production did improve during May and June, and the July bats are still better than the March/April production. Worse yet, the club is dealing with a series of injuries and tricky promotion decisions with Orlando Arcia and Domingo Santana, who have both recently made adjustments at Triple-A Colorado Springs. The best story at the deadline would be the lack of a need for a headline-grabbing trade thanks to the reinstatement of Arcia and Santana, but recent comments by Stearns suggest that promotions may not be the immediate course of events. Thus, the Brewers may be caused to defeat the Dodgers by wringing every ounce of production possible out of Tyler Saladino, Brad Miller, and Nate Orf in the middle infield, which is an unsavory equation at best; on the bright side, Brett Phillips or Keon Broxton could get another chance to shine in the outfield.

The following table outlines the overall race in the National League, for this installment featuring each team’s TAv, DRA, and park-adjusted run differential. “True Pace” assesses each club’s expected record according to their run differential, while “True .500″ assesses each club’s expected win total if they went .500 on top of their existing run differential.

When all the dust has settled, answering these questions of attrition is what contending clubs accomplish. So, in some sense the Brewers truly will have a chance to establish their position in the coming sprint to the playoffs. What would be a mistake is to assume that this team is starting this series of games with inferior talent, a roster that somehow makes them less than capable of facing these competitive squads. Thus begins the race: Go Brewers!

Photo Credit: Benny Sieu, USA Today Sports Images

Yet, there are many shortcomings with the 2018 Brewers, for all their strengths. The difficulty with quantifying the shortcomings for this team, however, is that they are not strategic shortcomings. In 2018, the shortcomings of the roster are shortcomings borne of development cycles and the long paths necessary to build extended MLB success from young players, or players seeking to establish their respective careers. The former category suits both Domingo Santana and Orlando Arcia, and to a lesser extent Jorge Lopez, Brandon Woodruff, and Zach Davies; the latter category suits players like Manny Pina, and to a lesser extent Brent Suter. These players challenge the long-term development goals of the Brewer given the extremely successful start to the 2018 season, but it is not an overstatement to write that each of these reserve-controlled contracts are significant assets to the Brewers organization and crucial for future success to the degree that they can build consistent MLB roles. This difficult development scenario is compounded when one realizes that pitching prospects Freddy Peralta and Corbin Burnes could also factor into second half plans for the Brewers, as well as depth position players like Jacob Nottingham and Brett Phillips.

Looking back on 2017, it’s easy to see that the Brewers could have solved their midseason shortcomings in a transactional manner. The club did not even need to make an impact starting pitching move, but could have used waiver claims or depth trades to bolster a rotation that was hit with midseason injuries and wearing thin (much more thin than the 2018 rotation, by the way). With the success of youngsters in 2017, their roster concerns were not development-oriented. Looking forward to the finish line in 2018, it is much more difficult to simply fix a transactional ideology to the Milwaukee roster issues. Simply stated, the Brewers need to prove their ability to help young players through adjustments at the MLB level, which is applicable to both Santana and Arcia. Both Arcia and Santana are crucial members of our beloved Milwaukee Nine despite their diverse scouting roles and tools. But this development decree also extends to the refinement of roles for Lopez and Woodruff in the pitching staff, as well as questions about clearing space for Peralta and Nottingham, let alone Burnes and Phillips. The Brewers can bolster their midseason 2018 club by doubling down on their player development approach at the MLB level, and giving players the space to make adjustments at the MLB level.

Related to this question about the Brewers’ ability to develop young players at the MLB level, it is worth asking whether a “rebuilding effort” was necessary to create this Brewers team. Or rather, are the Brewers succeeding “but for” their rebuilding efforts by previous President Doug Melvin and GM Stearns? Here’s a look at top Milwaukee players by WARP and acquisition:

What is fascinating about the 2018 Brewers is that despite the “branding” of the so-called rebuilding effort, a “rebuild” is hardly stamped on this team. 5.6 WARP of the team leaders could have been acquired by nearly any MLB team, through a purchase (i.e., a trade for cash) or MLB free agency. 0.7 WARP belongs to the MLB amateur draft, meaning that there is no high draft pick from a rebuilding season boosting this club (a la the “classic” scorched earth Cubs and Astros efforts); it’s even debatable whether one could call Corey Ray (picked Fifth overall) and Keston Hiura (picked Ninth overall) true “rebuilding” draft picks (in other words, a team does not “tank” to draft fifth overall). At best, one might argue that the Brewers’ 2016 record helped them gain favorable position to land Jesus Aguilar, allowing Milwaukee’s front office to build their #TeamDepth strengths.

The trades on this list are most interesting, though; the trades by both Melvin and Stearns form a spectrum ranging from “rebuilding” to “organizational depth” to “extended win-now,” and everything in-between.

• The move to acquire Josh Hader was most certainly a “rebuilding” move, by which I mean that Melvin traded away MLB contracts for minor league prospects.

• The move to acquire Christian Yelich was most certainly the opposite of a rebuilding move, as Stearns traded away four minor league prospects for an MLB contract, but it’s not quite a “win now” move as Yelich’s age and contract keep that window open for years. Yet in another sense this trade could certainly not have happened without rebuilding efforts, as acquisitions involving Lewis Brinson and Isan Diaz were necessary to eventually land Yelich.

• Meanwhile, the Tyler Thornburg – Travis Shaw transaction is arguably a textbook “counterbuilding” move in which Milwaukee and Boston swapped positions of MLB surplus (or, lack of need); it was not a classic rebuilding move, as Shaw was acquired to become the starting MLB 3B. That Boston somehow also included prospects in the deal is icing on the cake.

• Finally, the latest Jeremy Jeffress acquisition was a classic organizational depth trade.

Were these 10 players the ones you expected to lead the Brewers to contend for the 2018 NL Central crown? (I gather it’s an interesting mix of “Yes” and “No,” but I personally find this list endlessly fascinating. #YouCantPredictBaseball).

But are these WARP leaders truly the fruits of a rebuilding effort? One could argue that rebuilding should not have a transactional form, as I’m using the term, but instead should denote a phase in a club’s development cycle (a “spatial” form). In this regard, acquisitions like Eric Thames or Travis Shaw may not have technically been rebuilding moves, but they would have been less likely to occur by a true win-now club on a contending cycle since they required a certain “space to play” and “room to fail,” or room to find an MLB role. (This is the spatial role of rebuilding that many have argued is a valuable aspect of the MLB development cycle.) The same could be said about the MLB development of Jacob Barnes, or even, inexplicably, the development of Jesus Aguilar. Yet, in this regard, these spaces of rebuilding were rather shallow, as key development players like Pina, Santana, and even Chase Anderson and Jonathan Villar have struggled since their major breakthroughs. This is not a criticism of the players, for development cycles are long and each of these players could find success in their next turn. For example, Villar is already coming around for the 2018 Brewers, for instance, completely silencing the need for a 2B trade, while Chase Anderson is ironing out mechanical issues and potentially rebounding.

Following the spatial definition of rebuilding, then, one can completely reverse course and argue that the Brewers have mess less incentive to make large trades in 2018 than they did in 2017.

• The 2017 club ironically may have featured players have simultaneous peak years, or at least peak role surges: Jimmy Nelson (now injured), Chase Anderson (now mechanically repaired?), Orlando Arcia (needs to adjust), and Domingo Santana (needs to adjust) were worth 15.1 WARP in 2017, a production level that will almost certainly not return in 2018 (they are currently valued at -0.7 WARP [!!!]). The Brewers are never guaranteed to have that combination of elite defense, strong offensive production, and top rotation pitching again from this quartet, not in the same year. Even if each of these players settles into regular MLB roles, they may have reached peak production last year.

• (A counterargument could be made that given the Brewers’ production of Lorenzo Cain, Christian Yelich, Travis Shaw, Josh Hader, and Jeremy Jeffress, the 2018 window features at least five performances that may not occur again. I believe these roles are different than those of Nelson and Anderson, or even Arcia and Santana. Yelich, Cain, and even Jeffress have more established MLB success, and their time horizons with the club arguable improve the chances that this type of success could occur again. In fact, someone like Yelich could even improve. One could also argue that the Brewers should not waste this opportunity to win with an elite bullpen; I am much more sympathetic to that position.)

• So, it’s worth questioning whether more urgency for a roster-improving transaction was necessary in 2017 than 2018, when the club is already succeeding and can take a chance at continuing the development cycle with each of these players, or other organizational depth roles.

• Following the spatial definition of rebuilding, in which a rebuilding club is one that allows players the room to develop at the MLB level regardless of consequence, 2018 could serve as a strange competitive window season in which the club is justified in turning their gaze to the long-term: how important is it for the 2019, 2020, 2021 Brewers, etc., for Arcia and Santana to get right at the MLB level? Can they both be “rehabbed” at Triple-A Colorado Springs? Is it worth Milwaukee disrupting potential MLB rotational introductions to their trio of Woodruff, Peralta, and Burnes? If those pitchers have true MLB rotation roles, they are going to have to be introduced to the staff at some point during this current five-year contending window.

What is exciting about these Brewers, more than the winning, is that they remain an unexpected work in progress where suddenly every strength gained from 2015-2017, every lesson learned from 2015-2017, can be repurposed for the future. Contending teams need not stick to rigid transactional regimes; they can make trades to gamble on Travis Shaw, or free agency signings to gamble on Eric Thames, and still compete for the playoffs. Rebuilding teams need not bottom out, for there can be as much value in simply using roster space to gamble on Jonathan Villar, Junior Guerra, or Manny Pina, even compared to a top draft pick (for it is questionable whether an MLB team can truly forge useful developmental spaces while attempting to field a roster worthy of the first two or three draft picks).

Boiling this lesson down, it may seem like a radical departure from my previous criticisms, but the logic of the 2018 roster remains the same: open those developmental spaces for the organizational players struggling to correct their careers and build roles for 2019 and onward while this well-designed #TeamDepth contends onward. If they execute it correctly, these Brewers have an opportunity to exist entirely outside of win-now and rebuilding cycles.

Photo Credit: Bill Streicher, USA Today Sports Images

It is time to win. It is time to win now, it is time to win next year, and the year after that, and after those years, too. This is a thrilling feeling as a Brewers fan, especially as one who came of age as an everyday fan during the initial Doug Melvin rebuild. I gather this feeling is difficult for a fanbase that is so used to losing and disappointment so as to design defensive personalities toward the idea of going for it this year. But that’s over now: There’s never next year, not for the next five, and this completely reorients the Brewers organization. With Brinson, Monte Harrison, Isan Diaz, and Jordan Yamamoto each head to Miami, clearing out three of the top ten spots (and two of the top three spots on the Baseball Prospectus 2018 Top 10). But that’s okay, take your pick: does RHP Freddy Peralta re-enter the top ten? 3B Lucas Erceg? C Mario Feliciano? RHP Marcos Diplan? OF Tristen Lutz? IF Mauricio Dubon? These are all prospects that did not reach the Baseball Prospectus Top 10 that still have Overall Future Potential (OFP) that are somewhere between “useful” and “interesting” MLB potential, and each has something to prove in 2018 (and more space within which to do so).

There will be more time to digest and analyze these moves, but now the Brewers faithful have immediately turned toward trading Domingo Santana, Brett Phillips, and/or Keon Broxton. I am not simply playing the contrarian when I emphasize that the Brewers do not need to make such a move. First and foremost, each of Santana, Phillips, and Broxton remain under club reserve beyond the Ryan Braun era in Milwaukee, which means that the club can still play the long game with each of these players. It gets a little more difficult after Broxton will likely have his last minor league option burned in 2018, and Brett Phillips will likely have his last minor league option burned in 2019 (Brewerfan.net, 40-Man Roster).

But, the Brewers have a unique position of strength: first, they began a rest campaign for Ryan Braun in 2017, and there is no reason that the club cannot use a rest campaign for Lorenzo Cain as well. These players represent Milwaukee’s largest contracts, and the club has nothing to lose by remaining cautious with their health and playing time. By providing systematic rest to these veterans, the Brewers can gamble that these outfielders may be less susceptible to nagging injuries, and therefore maximize their potential production. It is worth it to Milwaukee to have the best possible versions of Cain and Braun available over the course of 162 and the playoffs. How can the club accomplish this and continue to win? By deploying some combination of Santana, Phillips, and Broxton between the bench and the minor leagues. Imagine these outfield sets:

Using a very basic assumption of four plate appearances per game for starters and one plate appearance for pinch hitters, these outfield schemes produce the following results:

This scenario obviously leans more on resting Braun than Cain, but more PA can be negotiated to maximize these scenarios. Phillips could serve as a defensive replacement for all three positions, and both Phillips and Santana could be used as late innings pinch hitters in various scenarios. Moreover, these scenarios are developed prior to considering injuries. Each of these players faces injury risks that could eat into playing time, which opens further opportunities for the next outfielder in line. If fans think about what it means to have an “analytic” front office, aggressive rest coupled with aggressive depth could be an important step in gaining an advantage over the 162 grind and the playoffs. In the World Series, after all, there will be a starting spot for three or four games for Braun, Cain, Yelich, and Santana; this is the type of long game that the Brewers can begin playing in rest strategies and roster building.

I am a proponent of the Brewers building the deepest team possible because the club needs every resource they can get in order to contend within their market. The club currently has enough cash to handle a signing of Cain and Yu Darvish or Jake Arrieta, so this is a real opportunity to build the best possible team for a half-decade span. At some point, trade returns for players like Santana, Phillips, and Broxton mean diminishing returns to the system. Neither Santana nor Broxton have enough of an MLB track record to yield impact prospect talent, and Phillips is in a strange in-between where he will neither be a likely trade destination for returning impact MLB talent or prospects. Holding steady with the outfield roster as is will work just fine; at worst, the club will run into a scenario in which players such as Hernan Perez, Stephen Vogt, Eric Sogard, or Jonathan Villar fail to make the MLB roster out of training camp. If that is the price to pay for significant outfield depth, that is a better price than to trade Santana, Phillips, or Broxton before necessary, and return a less attractive depth option at the first sight of injury or ineffectiveness during the season.

Photo Credit: Isaiah J. Downing, USAToday Sports Images

In 2017, Jonathan Villar performed so badly that the club had to bring in Neil Walker to play second base while they pushed for the playoffs.  Although they fell short and missed the wild card game, Walker performed admirably.  In 38 games with Milwaukee, Walker posted a .305 True Average (TAv) and was worth 0.9 Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP).  One win from Walker in a quarter of the season is a good output, as it represented an upgrade over Villar’s season-long .242 TAv and 0.8 WARP.

As we are all aware, though, the Brewers have not yet re-signed Walker.  The only infield transactions they’ve made have been re-signing Eric Sogard and adding Mauricio Dubon to the 40-man roster.  Both Sogard and Dubon profile as more utility types than everyday second basemen, though, so their presence should not preclude an actual upgrade.  Both are capable of playing the position, but neither is good enough that the Brewers—a team with playoff aspirations—should be satisfied.

Walker is the most obvious solution.  He is not a superstar, but he is a solid player, and he may be available on a shorter, one- or two-year deal because the free agent market has collapsed.  From 2013 through 2016, Walker had been worth between 2.9 and 3.5 WARP.  That is a valuable player, and that level of consistency would be useful for a team that will be relying on some high-variability players (Lewis Brinson, Orlando Arcia) for their playoff push in 2018.  Even during last season, which was a down year by Walker’s standards, was not actually that bad, as his cumulative 1.7 WARP still made him worthy of a roster spot.

But as I mentioned above, the offseason is coming to a close, and the Brewers are running out of time.  This doesn’t matter so much if Walker is the solution, because the free agent market as a whole is moving slowly.  But if Walker signs elsewhere, the late date in the calendar makes working on a contingency plan more difficult.  Free agents are likely to sign quickly once the dominoes start falling simply because of the lack of time left in the winter, and the second base free agent market is not that deep.  There just aren’t that many exciting options; Danny Espinosa is the only one who appears slightly intriguing.

This late stature in the offseason also matters because it decreases the amount of time for a potential trade.  I don’t know what the Brewers front office is working on, and I imagine they are working on upgrades at basically every position.  But they cannot be pursuing every angle at once, so if Walker is the first choice, then pivoting to finding trade partners will still take some time.

Spring training is quite long, so one could argue that there is no need to make a move in the next month anyway.  A spring training trade, or even an April trade, would bring in a player early enough that the Brewers’ overall season would not be impacted.  The front office does not stop working once spring training starts or Opening Day arrives, so whether reinforcements arrive on January 30 or March 30 may not matter all that much.  The timing of these moves do matter, though, because the Brewers are at a bit of a crossroads in terms of how willing they are to push for the playoffs this year.  If they are waiting until March or April to address this kind of need, then they are unlikely to also be investing resources in a starting pitcher.  Thus, while the timing of when exactly a new second baseman arrives is mostly irrelevant, it would be indicative of the club’s broader strategy.

This article works on the assumption that an upgrade is needed, and I think the club believes that as well.  David Stearns has proven himself too smart to think that Eric Sogard is a long-term option; despite his 1.257 OPS in May, he finished the year with an OPS of just .770.  Even this was over one hundred points higher than his career mark of .638.  Mauricio Dubon is unproven, and questions remain about his bat.  The Brewers seem to love Hernan Perez, but he has a career .244 TAv, and he backslid from his seeming improvement in 2016.  That leaves Villar, who had a disappointing year and appears to have lost the club’s trust.  Even though he ended the season well (.888 OPS following the Walker trade), he could not regain his playing time, as he got only 63 plate appearances in the last 42 games of the season.  Villar was given a long rope, as no move was made to replace him until mid-August, but the rope did look as if it ran out.

Craig Counsell’s use of Villar in August and September suggests to me that the club does not view him as a solution at second base.  If that is the case, then an external option must be in the cards.  Because of the glacial pace of the free agent market, though, if Neil Walker is not that player, the Brewers are running out of time to find a backup.

Photo Credit: Charles LeClaire, USAToday Sports Images

Against the mighty Cubs, then, the Brewers went +6 RS / +12 RA compared to an average distribution of the Cubs seasonal Runs Scored and Runs Allowed. Compared to the Brewers’ own performance, Milwaukee went +2 RS / -3 RA against the Cubs based on an average distribution of their seasonal Runs Scored and Runs Allowed. On balance, this means that the Milwaukee Nine held their own against the vastly superior Cubs, which was evident throughout the tense September series in which the Brewers forced a divisional conversation and nearly made the playoffs.

Brewers fans are largely complaining about the state of the club’s Winter Meetings, as the club is expected to improve pitching but came away from the meetings without any new starting pitchers or relievers. Obviously, the offseason is very young, and Stearns himself has shown a penchant for working deep into the offseason: see the Khris Davis trade in February 2016, as one example, or even the bullpen-depth-defining Jared Hughes signing entering 2017. But even as fans fret about a rotation featuring Chase Anderson, Zach Davies, Junior Guerra, Brent Suter, and Brandon Woodruff to enter 2017, it is worth remembering the performance against the Cubs to frame the potential of this group of arms. Specifically, it was the unassuming Davies (and, arguably, equally unassuming Anderson and Suter) that strung together some of the best outings against the Cubs.

In fact, selecting a biased sample of these four pitchers’ best starts against the Cubs, a 58.7 IP, 15 runs (2.30 runs average!), 47 strikeout / 11 walk / 4 home run performance appears. Despite a 47 RS / 28 RA (!!!) team performance in these ten, Milwaukee’s bats and bullpen unfortunately failed to support the starters in some of these games, resulting in a 6-4 record despite the successful starting pitching (Milwaukee went 3-6 in the other nine games versus the Cubs with a much worse 41 RS / 56 RA performance).

Selecting the successful games obviously presents a biased image of performance, but it is worth diving into these starts in order to see how the Brewers succeeded. In what follows, it will be clear that the Brewers succeeded by adjusting throughout the year against the Cubs, and (for the most part) sticking with extremely balanced pitch selection approaches against the monstrous Cubs offense. What is meant to result from this study is increased fan confidence in the approach of the pitchers along with the catching staff, coaches, and (probably) team baseball research department. The Brewers undoubtedly had a lot go right in 2017, and if no baseball season can be successful without luck, the Brewers were particularly lucky in their convergence of events. But, luck does not explain the full story, as across the board a group of relatively unknown or unheralded players quietly gave hell to the most hyped team on the Senior Circuit.

This is not to suggest that the Brewers will have continued success against Cubs bats simply by working in similar zones, but rather that these Brewers processes of dancing throughout the zone from start to start could continue to orient these arms for seemingly surprising success. Indeed, the Brewers arms already improved by 26 runs between the first and second half of 2017, thanks to a 4.11 runs average in August, capped off with 3.64 runs average in September/October. Milwaukee is a pitching-first club, and the nails approach against the Cubs demonstrates one of the keys to that success.

The image of Zach Davies conjures a sinker-change up starter who constantly works low in the zone. What’s intriguing about Davies’s success against the Cubs throughout 2017 is that the righty consistently worked up into the zone to offset his low, sinking change up and blooping curve. Moreover, the righty’s additional pitch, what Brooks Baseball calls a “Cutter” but could be somewhere between a traditional cut fastball and slider, became one of the balancing aspects of his approach with the Cubs. The “cutter” itself for Davies is an interesting pitch, one that the young righty first expanded in 2016, and then shifted slightly in 2017; the PITCHf/x readings are slight, but essentially in 2017 Davies was using the pitch to “run” slightly more armside and rise slightly more than the 2016 version. Unlike 2016, Davies basically evened out his exceptional change up and big curveball, an arsenal change that churned out more groundballs and whiffs from the cutter in 2017.

Here are Davies’s four best starts against the Cubs. The shifts are subtle, but it’s clear that the righty was changing his approach with each meeting against the Cubs simply based on pitch selection. But these aren’t wholesale changes, instead (like the pitcher) they went on-a-bit, off-a-bit, adding and subtracting subtly to find a successful approach with each start. By the end of the year, the approach was working wonders for the righty.

Davies did not simply rely on pitch selection to baffle the Cubs, however. The righty consistently changed his approach within the zone for each start, including challenging the Cubs up in the zone with both fastballs and breaking balls. According to Brooks Baseball, here are the four best Davies starts versus the Cubs in terms of total zone migration:

By separating Davies’s sinker and fastball, as well as his cutter, change, and curveball, one can isolate the specific areas of the zone in which the righty was attempting to work “hard” and “soft.” Here are Davies’s sinker and the occasional fastball:

I grouped Davies’s “cutter” with the change and curve, because I’m simply not certain that it works like an additional “hard” pitch for Davies. The righty’s arsenal is beginning to look like that of Shaun Marcum at his best (a very good thing, remember Marcum was a 12.1 WARP starter from 2007-2011), meaning that the righty can provide armside- and gloveside-breaking pitches, while also essentially changing speeds on his “sinker” (with the change up) and “fastball” (with the cutter), making the curveball the “great” equalizer. Against previous scouting reports, size questions remain for Davies, although he has remained particularly durable in each of his advanced seasons thus far, and he is succeeding beyond the expected back-end starter “Overall Future Potential (OFP)” role because of his ability to adjust at the MLB level and due to his new cutter.

The cutter is typically the breaking pitch that Davies throws “uo” in the zone, with the curve and change dropping low. This gives Davies the distinct advantage of working three different velocity levels through different areas the zone:

What is striking about both migrations throughout the zone is that Davies does not simply “climb the ladder” with the hard stuff as time progresses, but he also locates his “breaking” and “off speed” offerings higher in the zone from time-to-time, too. As a result, Davies is essentially going straight after Cubs batters, and despite their acumen for power, they were largely unable to hit the righty as the season wore on. This could be an effective mindgame from Davies, insofar as he has established himself as someone who not only prefers to work low in the zone but also is perceived to be someone who cannot come into the zone to challenge batters. One might question whether batters’ lack of expectation for pitches within the zone allowed Davies to have an advantage for pounding those areas with strikes. Indeed, he was rather successful throughout these four starts in terms of limiting hits:

Notice that by the last start against the Cubs, despite locating heavily throughout the zone and especially gloveside (to your right on the GIF), the Cubs simply did not end AB in those zones, and did not collect hits in those areas.

Like Davies, Chase Anderson’s success in 2017 swirled around a cutter and a curveball, although those tow pitches mean two different things for both arms. Anderson has become slightly more of a “velocity” pitcher, ramping his fastball from roughly 92 MPH in 2014 to nearly 94 MPH in 2017, and he famously revamped his curveball and cutter under the watch of pitching coach Derek Johnson. With a new grip, and increased usage of both the curve and cutter (at the expense of the change and other fastballs), Anderson upped the whiffs and groundballs on the curveball within the system of his new arsenal.

What is interesting about Anderson is that while one might expect Davies to be the wily pitch shifter, against the Cubs Anderson’s five-pitch arsenal moved in a more extreme manner than that of Davies. With the added velocity, Anderson effectively looks like a cross between a pitch-bending trickster and a classic over-the-top power pitcher:

From start to start against the Cubs, Anderson also migrated his pitching approach throughout the zone. Here are the righty’s three best starts against the Cubs. Notice the total overall migration from armside-to-gloveside zone approaches, especially the sharp overall pitch location contrast between the two September starts:

Within these overall migration patterns, Anderson’s distinct alignment of the cutter / fastballs approach and off-speed stuff is a beautiful thing. Unlike Davies, I lumped Anderson’s cutter in with his fastballs, simply because Anderson has a less distinct fastball queue than Davies (who throws a true “sinker”), as Anderson’s “moving” fastball is more like a hard running, riding pitch than a sinker. That his cutter is also nearly 90 MPH makes that pitch much closer to Anderson’s original fastball velocity, and easier to classify as a true cut fastball. Watch as Anderson stacks up the Cubs gloveside with hard stuff in his first September start, then dilutes the hard pitches throughout the zone:

What’s stunning with Anderson’s fastball / off-speed pitching approach is how he completely splits the two classifications of pitches throughout the zone. Granted, this would happen somewhat with Davies as well if the cutter is treated like a fastball instead of a breaking ball, so it is worth bearing this methodological decision in mind. Still, Anderson’s split is quite extreme, as shown in his first September start: with fastballs and cutters blaring in gloveside, Anderson whips those off-speed pitches to the armside of the zone. Once again, this is a beautiful type of dispersion, as once the Cubs have this start in mind, during their second look at Anderson later in the month, he completely moves his off-speed pitches gloveside.

Like Davies, Anderson effectively used these moving selections to limit hits from Cubs bats:

With Brent Suter and Junior Guerra, there are fewer starts available, and therefore less room to compare their respective arsenals.

So let’s just appreciate that Suter throws his 86 MPH fastball as his majority pitch (he is NOT a junkballer), and that he also consistently used his fastball to challenge Cubs bats high in the zone:

With the lefty’s insistence against squaring up when he releases the ball, Suter’s high fastball must be an uncomfortable sight. Imagine the Raptor’s arms rotating at you, and then instead of a top-down delivery, the southpaw slings the ball around his body while also pushing it high in the zone. This is a beautiful pitch, and it’s also worth questioning whether Suter is really just throwing a cutter; from time to time, the Raptor throws that pitch in a way to break “in” on righties, which is precisely what he did in both starts against the Cubs.

Not to be outdone, Guerra’s post-injury work against the Cubs revealed a bizarre variation of his splitter, where the off-speed pitch actually flattened out and seemed to flutter as a “straight change up” to the plate. Guerra often seemed to have no idea where the bizarre splitter would run, as the pitch sometimes dropped, sometimes rose, and sometimes simply landed on a straight line like Rich Harden’s ghost pitch:

It should not be viewed as a cliche that the Brewers beat the Cubs because their best pitchers consistently adjusted against Chicago bats. It’s not a truism that MLB players succeed by adjusting; they succeed by adjusting, and at times when the adjustments don’t work, the struggles can be difficult to turn into effective performances. The Brewers succeeded with a gang of unheralded pitchers, in the form of swingman Suter, old rookie Guerra, “back-end” Davies, and replacement level Anderson. But none of this quartet was what they were supposed to be during the 2017 season, in part because of their ability to use flexible approaches to maximize their tools. Davies maximized his approach by coming after presumably unsuspecting batters high in the zone, while Anderson maximized his approach by running vast migrations throughout the strike zone. The difficulty of this approach is that while it is true that Milwaukee will once against need these pitchers to adjust to succeed in 2018, their adjustments may not necessarily mimic their 2017 success; new or changed pitches may emerge, new pitch sequencing, or velocity questions (or surpluses) may also impact zone approaches.

At the very least, the ability to adjust in 2017 should cause Brewers fans and analysts not to count out this unsuspecting rotation prior to 2018.

Photo Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki, USAToday Sports Images.

Here are the Top 10 2017 free agent arms, with the full table available here:

Related Reading: “Forecasting Chase” || “Free Agency”

Thankfully for the Brewers, no one is talking about Hellickson. Baseball Prospectus recently began a free agency ranking series, and Hellickson failed to make the Top 50. This is perfectly acceptable for Milwaukee’s purposes, however, for Hellickson is the perfect definition of a free agency class that is loaded with pitchers that have surface imperfections but are perfectly suitable to design deep and serviceable rotations. Hellickson is a more interesting case in terms of convincing Brewers fans of his merits, given his 8-11, 5.43 ERA surface performance in 2017, as well as his declining strike out rate (from 19.6 percent in 2016 to 13.8 percent in 2017). Yet, the 6’1″, 190 pound righty armed with a cutter, curve, and change up behind his primary fastball could be the perfect opportunity to apply the lessons from Jimmy Nelson and Chase Anderson’s mechanical successes.

Over the last four seasons, Hellickson has morphed his pitching arsenal to amplify his change up and move away from his primary, rising-riding fastball. In fact, it is surprising to see the righty work as a true “junkball” arm in 2017, turning to that change up so frequently as to select it more than any of his other pitches. The intrigue about this arsenal development will be in the balance between 2015, 2016, and 2017. Between 2015 and 2016, Hellickson made his first shift to the cutter while also doubling down on his change up, which drove his most successful season since 2011 (and arguably his most successful season of his career in terms of strike out rate and groundball rate alongside DRA). One could question whether these developments went a step too far in 2017, as the veteran leaned on his change up more than ever while also turning to a riding-sinking fastball and increasing that cutter.The following table tracks the basic development of Hellickson’s arsenal and pitch selection over the last four seasons (“FB” means “fastball” here):

Following these arsenal shifts and pitch selection patterns, Hellickson’s strike out rate suffered in 2017. The decline in strike outs seemingly follows a very clear pattern with the evolution in this pitching approach. Compare 2016 Brooks Baseball outcomes….

…with 2017 outcomes:

For developing an account of the vanishing strike outs, following the change up and curveball results between these charts. Those 2016 whiff rates on the change up and curveball are not necessarily outliers, which is the first important information to supplement these outcome charts. In 2015, Hellickson drew 23 percent whiffs with his change up and 16 percent with the curve; in 2014, those numbers were 22 percent with the change and 12 percent with the curve. The major factors here are (1) the complete turn from a primary, rising fastball approach to a sinking fastball approach, (2) the extreme reliance on the change up over time, and (3) the introduction and increased reliance on the cut fastball.

The cutter is a peculiar pitch for Hellickson, as the righty landed it in the strike zone less frequently in 2017, but still elicited swings on the pitch approximately half the time. This pitch was seemingly meant to induce weak contact, as the whiffs remained low both seasons (below 5 percent), while the foul ball percentages were very high both seasons. In 2017, those increased foul balls, as well as pop ups, drained the line drive rate from the pitch. This arguably ate into Hellickson’s strike out results, but the outcomes with the cutter were not problematic. Here, the change and curve come to mind as the primary sources of trouble: while Hellickson continued to combine both pitches for approximately 42 percent of his total arsenal, he continued to diminish use of the curve in favor of the change. However, this arrangement was accompanied by fewer strikes, a notable decline in swings, and subsequently plummeting whiff rates. When batters did swing, they hit the ball far, doubling the number of fly balls off of the change up; what was a fantastic pitch in 2016 (.173 AVG, 41 percent strike out rate, and .274 BABIP), the change up morphed into a nightmare in 2017 (.250 AVG, .509 SLG, 28 percent strike out rate, and .283 BABIP). Coupled with increased usage of the sinking fastball, which was not a strong suit for Hellickson to begin with, the shift to increased cutter usage, decreased curve, and extreme change up selection resulted in mound performance that drifted away from the quiet success of 2016.

Looking back at Chase Anderson’s profile, one can see how 2017 exhibited success through balance, alongside mechanical adjustments related to the secondary offerings for the righty. Comparing Anderson to Hellickson on a one-to-one basis is difficult in part because of Anderson’s climbing fastball velocity, but the adjustments involving the secondary pitches, and the balancing of those offerings between the change, curve, and even cutter became a source of success for the veteran. For example, Anderson’s whiff rate on the curve and cutter skyrocketed as both pitches increased in usages and Anderson pounded the zone more frequently than in 2016.

It’s difficult to not see the similarities between Hellickson and Anderson, as well. Both pitchers had difficult years in terms of run prevention, the latter in 2017 and the former in 2016, when their change up use climbed, their curve decline, and the balance was not yet right between the three fastballs. Without the velocity increase of Anderson, one might not expect Hellickson to improve as drastically within the Brewers system, yet it’s worth remembering that the veteran Hellickson was a 3.0+ WARP starting pitcher before Anderson was; this is not a knock on Anderson, but a recognition that he has some template for success that he can return to, or some feel for adjusting at the MLB level. In fact, given the rotational success of Zach Davies, as well as pitching staff success involving Brent Suter, it is arguable that Milwaukee is a fantastic pitching location for the exact arsenal imbalance exhibited by Hellickson in 2017. There has been a 3.4 K/BB, 43 percent groundball pitcher in Hellickson, just as there was a 3.3 K/BB, 41 percent groundball pitcher embedded in Anderson’s arsenal and world of mechanical potentialities; a particular challenge for Brewers analytics is to design a system based around specific profiles of success and spin those lessons into valuable roster acquisitions and development.

The test here is how the Brewers front office can forecast from their scouting, mechanical, and coaching successes with their 2017 staff: Hellickson is another righty with an extremely similar frame, upright delivery, and five-pitch arsenal centered around three fastballs, change up, and curve. Between age-29 and age-31, this profile is not particularly common in the MLB. An outwardly “analytical” front office should be able to process the information collected from their previous successes, from PITCHf/x data to professional insights from coaches, and balance those lessons for each particular profile that resides on their pitching staff.

From a statistical standpoint, this case is beyond a “small sample size,” for it is as arguably as biased as nearly any mechanical problem could be. Working with pitching mechanics presents an inherently biased standpoint to the pitcher, coaching staff, and front office alike. Yet, while statistical methods indeed draw fruitful observations through many applications, more narrow, biased problems reveal the depths of thought that can be applied to pitching (or mechanical problems in general); pitching in this regard is more of an ecosystem, a system of dynamic interactions, a case where even through unrepeatable singularities one may find signals worth amplifying.

Where a previous imbalance existed in Chase Anderson’s approach, a current imbalance exists in Jeremy Hellickon’s arsenal, and the Brewers are precisely the club that can capitalize on the latter’s free agency status, redevelop that arsenal within their system, and deploy a deep rotation to maintain the pitching successes of 2017. This is the type of move that can define the club moving forward, and the type of move that can answer now-popular questions like, “Who is the next Charlie Morton?,” now applied to Milwaukee’s particular coaching standpoint.

Photo Credit: Derik Hamilton, USAToday Sports Images

Those narratives will undoubtedly carry into 2018 guided by the very same contradictions: Milwaukee will indeed be developing many young players at the MLB level (including Lewis Brinson, Josh Hader, Brett Phillips, and Brandon Woodruff), while the team also has several opportunities to improve with established players (either through trades involving their prospects, through free agency signings, or both).

To put it another way: GM David Stearns can take the roster in several directions, and certainly has the resources available to contend while continuing to develop some players.

One way to assess player value, and therefore roster needs, is to estimate the surplus value that each player (and their contractual situation) provides the team. Value is assumed to be production and scarcity, recognizing that a player is not simply valuable to a club based on production, but also based on cost and the general availability of that skill set within the MLB. Surplus is the difference provided between a player’s production and their contract, recognizing that these aspects can be double-counted (a team simultaneously receives a player’s production on the field and their production gauged against their contract). Based on these assumptions, I tracked the surplus value of the Brewers 40-man roster (as of October 20, 2017) by using harsh depreciation to reduce each player’s maximum value (recognizing that a player’s performance typically declines over time save for rare cases).

The following chart tracks changes in surplus entering 2017 to entering 2018, while also assigning an Overall Future Potential (OFP) role for each Brewers roster member:

What these surplus numbers can suggest, in the abstract, is the difference between “the number of the wins above replacement” a player will produce during their contract and the OFP a team might receive if they traded the player at this point in time (alternately, they might suggest a contract range; for example, if the Brewers offered Neil Walker a $30 million contract, they would likely retain some surplus value during that contract).

Using the extremely interesting and difficult case of Jonathan Villar to interpret this table, his 2016 campaign and contract control years still loom large enough to suggest that the Brewers should not move the infielder for cheap; but the shortstop-turned-bench/utility option does mean that Villar’s ultimate role is trending downward, meaning that if Milwaukee believes that role decline is real and will continue to materialize, moving Villar for less than his top value could offset the issues of rostering a declining role. This should outline the difficulty of making roster decisions: in the case of Villar, there is not necessarily a right answer.

I should add that surplus value is abstract in the sense that there is a point at which additional surplus does not provide a team transaction value. Scooter Gennett and Chris Carter should be the most specific examples of this phenomenon in recent Brewers memory, as both players retained solidly positive surplus value entering 2017, but were essentially unwanted on the trade market and therefore expendable for nothing. Following this example, a rule of thumb might be to expect any type of roster move once a player’s surplus value dips below $20 million (or, less than three wins above replacement). Looking at the table of the Brewers roster above, this fact should seem intuitive with many of the names on the list (for example, it is highly unlikely that the Brewers would be able to move a player like Andrew Susac or even Eric Thames for their maximal surplus value).

By averaging each player’s 2017, 2018, and OFP surplus value, and comparing that to their change in value over time, a rather intuitive 2018 roster emerges. In this case, I excluded each player with a Negative-50 percent change in value (ex., a 50 percent decline), which produced need at Catcher, Second Base, and Right-Handed Pitcher, with additional question marks about the Utility roles. This is a rather succinct picture of the actual needs for the 2018 Brewers, and it also shows that if a few key free agents are retained, or similar free agents from outside the organizational signed, the Brewers can assemble quite a good roster:

These tables need not force an analyst to rely on numbers alone in order to validate roster decisions. Compare the following descriptions of potential role upgrades for the 2018 Brewers with those players’ statistical trends, and find nearly 20 roster spots (on the 40-Man) that can be upgraded for 2018:

The benefit of this exercise is that additional roster functions can be analyzed, either through descriptive or analytical means. For example, one could compare some of the best Rule 5 Draft Roster Protection candidates with the players above in order to find the most salient moves for the future value of the organization. Via Brewerfan.net:

Once again, this should exhibit a rather intuitive process of evaluation. If the future value of a catcher such as Jacob Nottingham is better than either Stephen Vogt, Andrew Susac, or Jett Bandy (or all three players), it should not hurt to lose one of those players in order to roster Nottingham. Each of these catchers are good candidates for contractual non-tenders for this reason (and, indeed, catcher is a position that the Brewers can upgrade in terms of depth behind/alongside Manny Pina). Similarly, allowing Matt Garza to walk via free agency and rostering Marcos Diplan, Freddy Peralta, or Devin Williams in that place should improve the pitching surplus of the roster. Where it gets more interesting is considering a player like Mauricio Dubon, and whether he simply takes the spot of free agent Eric Sogard, or overtakes Villar or Hernan Perez.

Using these analytical approaches should validate the fact that the Brewers are in a unique position entering 2018. They are a good team, indeed, that also features many up-and-coming players to develop at the MLB level and many declining roles that can be replaced. Where surplus value becomes useful is targeting particular trades, or simply determining when a player should be released or non-tendered.

A player like Keon Broxton, Perez, Susac, or Vogt should demonstrate this difficult decision-making process, and perhaps cause fans to realign their expectations that these types of players can receive impactful trade returns to Milwaukee. Given the packed outfield for 2018, the Brewers could conceivably release a player like Broxton should trade partners refuse to bite with a 45-to-50 OFP / quality depth trade (matching Broxton’s $11.5M-to-$19.8M surplus), for the trouble is that Broxton’s expected role is indeed declining (and any particular trade partner will also know that). This should not simply be viewed as picking on Broxton, as the point exists for Vogt and several other players on the roster.

“Slingin’ Stearns” earned his nickname for wheeling-and-dealing on the trade market during his first offseason in Milwaukee, but that reputation has calmed over time (not surprisingly, as the club completed their rebuilding process). Stearns did not show any hesitation in aggressively using waiver claims and releases to define his 2016-2017 offseason, and now the GM’s reputation may be defined by how effectively he clears roster space for what’s next: refined future development and improved MLB roles to contend in 2018.

The 2017 season proved that these goals can align and coexist within the same roster, so there are no excuses for failing to improve this strategy by learning from the 2017 progression.

Photo Credit: Jim Young, USAToday Sports Images.

But here we are. Milwaukee is 41-39 and one game up on the Cubs. Now the team is left wondering where they can improve and what pieces they can afford to sell off. The Brewers are going to look to improve at the deadline, the question is what spots on the roster will they be looking to improve exactly.

It is safe to say the corner infield spots are solidified in off-season acquisitions Travis Shaw and Eric Thames. Thames has struggled since April, but his OPS is still .935 and his Total Average (TAv) is at .318. He still has some of the best numbers in baseball and the Brewers will be hoping for another hot month out of Thames. Shaw has been the Brewers’ most valuable position player at 2.07 WARP. He is hitting for average, taking his walks, hitting for power, and playing solid defense. He isn’t going anywhere.

The Brewers just claimed Stephen Vogt off waivers from the Oakland A’s and he is apparently going to be taking Jett Bandy’s catching work, as Bandy was optioned to AAA in the corresponding move. Catcher could be one spot they look to improve. Pina and Bandy have come back down to earth after their hot start and Vogt has been terrible so far in 2017. Trades for catchers mid-season are tricky, as the Brewers learned last season in the Johnathon Lucroy trade. They might be better served looking elsewhere.

In the middle infield, Orlando Arcia is enjoying a solid sophomore season and the shortstop position looks to be his for good. He has been worth 1.72 BWARP, though mostly reliant on his defensive prowess. If Eric Sogard ever falls back to earth, the second base spot is somewhere the Brewers will be looking to improve. Jonathan Villar has had a hard time following up on his breakout 2016 season. He has played in just 59 games thus far due to a back injury, and had just a .626 OPS in the games he made it into. For now, the Brewers might be content riding the Sogard wave and hoping for a recovery from Villar when he gets back.

The crowded outfield may not need any additions, but a subtraction could be needed. Ryan Braun trade rumors have been floating around for years now. A more realistic trade asset may involve either Hernan Perez or Keon Broxton. Lewis Brinson was just sent down to Class-AAA, but he will need somewhere to play sometime next year at the latest. Perez or Broxton could be paired with a prospect or two and bring back something interesting to the Brewers, without taking too much off their major-league roster.

The pitching staff has the most opportunity for improvement. The Brewers all of a sudden have a solid 1-2 punch in Jimmy Nelson and Chase Anderson, who rank 19th and 9th respectively in ERA among starters with over 80 innings pitched. Matt Garza has been solid in his return but is nothing more than a decent number four or five at this point. The same can be said about Zach Davies, who is having an off 2017, but has had better results in the past. Chase Anderson’s injury increases this need for improvement.

If the Brewers want to go for it this year, they should look to acquire a C.C Sabathia/Zack Grienke style superstar starting pitcher rental. Johnny Cueto has an opt out after this season, and is already generating trade rumors a month ahead of the deadline. Cueto has had one of the worst halves of his recent career so he may come at a discounted price. Sonny Gray is another possible name, although his extra years of control almost guarantees he will be more expensive than Cueto.

Or this Brewers could go the more conservative route. They can trade for someone like Ervin Santana or Jason Vargas, two breakout starting pitchers whose respective teams are almost surely to be shopping. This would allow the Brewers to play for this season and still stay stocked for the future. With the team vastly outplaying what was expected of them to start the season, look for the Brewers front office to take the safer route if they do decide to acquire a starting pitcher.

The Brewers will almost surely acquire some bullpen help. As closer Corey Knebel has been everything they had hoped for out of Neftali Feliz, except there isn’t anyone to fill Knebel’s previous set-up role now. The bullpen, which looked like a strength in the first month or so of the season, has almost completely fallen apart. Jacob Barnes and Oliver Drake both sport ERA’s over 4.00 and their peripherals are not much better. Jared Hughes looks like the second best arm out of the bullpen. His K/BB percentage is 19.5 percent for the month of June and he has a 2.45 ERA od that same stretch. The teams bullpen is still the 13th most valuable bullpen in the league, but that is thanks mostly to Knebel, who has been worth more than Chase Anderson, in almost 50 less innings, according to WARP. The Brewers just need to add some depth behind Knebel. They have the dominant closer but they will not be sniffing a playoff spot if they don’t fill their holes in the bullpen.

Odds are, the Brewers are going to play it safe. Fans may be disappointed that they team didn’t go all in when they are (hopefully still) in first place. Look for the Brewers to add a bullpen arm or two and possible another starting pitcher to add some length to the rotation.